Archive for June 2017

﻿I took a break from all those blue glazes and started layering on the pinks. I am using Holbein’s Opera and Permanent Mauve. The tips of the bracts are a light green so I layered on Gamboge Nova and then Phthalo Blue. The white fruits are shaped with a very diluted wash of the same green mixture.

Now you are being to see the subject of my painting- it’s a kind of ornamental banana!

Then the yellow layers go on. I use a big brush to lay on broad washes of yellow. I may spent a few days painting only yellow shades from light to deep. The flowers are a bright pink so are left unpainted. No yellow there.

Then I add the red layers. The red may be cool or warm depending on how dark the shadow areas will be.

Then I add the blues. Which makes the yellows and red turn green and brown!

From here on I will be spending days adding layers of blue. Again the shades would be either cool or warm and I will be using Phthalo Blue, Peacock Blue, Cobalt Blue and Ultramarine Deep. Also the brushes I am using get progressively finer as I refine the details.

Recently I was given this paphiopedilum orchid. It grows and flowers well in the Kuching heat. No idea of its name though, probably a variety of a paphiopedilumchamberlianum, judging from the leaves and the three flowers which open in succession over a period of several weeks.

It was fun to paint the rose pink pouch and the black hairs on the petals! Holbein paints and Fabriano Classico paper 14″by 20″.